Mariah Redmound in the formulation room making medical marijuana products during a media tour of the Curaleaf medical cannabis cultivation and processing facility, August 22, 2019, in Ravena, New York.
AP Photo/Hans Pennink

More people are looking for jobs in the industry as well. Over the same period, cannabis-related job searches have skyrocketed 650%.

"There are very few industries that have seen a sevenfold increase in job-seeker searches in three years," Andrew Flowers, an economist at Indeed and the author of a recent report on cannabis hiring told Business Insider in August.

The cannabis industry is complex and companies are hiring people with a variety of backgrounds, from entry-level retail to senior-level finance and M&A positions, to pharmacists, biochemists, and horticulture experts.

To get a sense of how to best land a job in the booming industry, Business Insider spoke with some of the top recruiters in the cannabis world. Here are their best tips.

Tip No. 1: Bring a 'startup' mindset.

Like any new, exciting space, cannabis companies are growing rapidly. But unlike many other industries, cannabis companies are operating in a murky legal climate where regulations are constantly shifting and businesses are sometimes forced to pivot on a dime.

"People call it 'cannabis time' because things are just moving so fast," said Katherine Kramer, a research associate at the executive search firm Whitney Partners. "You have to be very comfortable with uncertainty and a constantly changing market."

Karson Humiston, the CEO of Denver-based Vangst, a startup that places job candidates into cannabis companies, agrees. "There's a ton of hype around the cannabis industry right now," Humiston said.

If you're coming from a big, established company where everything is organized and every department is laid out with standard operating procedures, you may have a tough transition into the cannabis world "where every company is still a startup," she said.

"Don't go into cannabis if you want to be able to hide behind other people," Humiston said. "You need to go in being ready to provide value and roll up your sleeves and do a ton of different jobs."

To Humiston, the most successful candidates in cannabis have come from hyper-growth startups in other industries. "They get ready to pivot and jump a million ways and they're excited and energized by all the changes," she said.

"I think what you really want at the start of an industry are people who've been involved in smaller companies who can work fast, be nimble, and wear multiple hats," Schmults said.

Tip No. 2: Look at US cannabis retailers (multi-state operators) and cannabis tech startups. Bonus if you have finance experience.

Yutong Yuan/Business Insider

As cannabis companies mature, they're looking for senior executives across accounting, finance, marketing, and retail roles to help build out their teams.

One of the biggest trends that Humiston said she's seen this year is publicly traded US cannabis companies is that they're leveling up their teams by hiring more experienced leaders.

These companies, like Green Thumb Industries, Columbia Care, and Cresco, among others, are expanding rapidly into new markets and have "really aggressive" growth goals, she said.

"They need that level of VPs, executives, and directors who have experience in traditional retail and other mature industries," said Humiston, especially as these companies go from managing, say, three or four pot shops in one state, to a network of hundreds of stores across many states — all with their own specific regulations.

On top of that, cannabis companies, like any other emerging industry, are increasingly fighting for market share and hunting for acquisitions. That means they're in a period where they're raising lots of capital, so they need financial experts and people with investment banking experience.

"Companies maybe went from having a more entry-level bookkeeper to really saying, OK, we need to hire a CFO," Humiston said. "I think that what's happening is you're bringing in that top-level person — potentially a CFO or the VP of finance — and then they're getting involved and saying, here are six additional accounting rules that we need to support this growing business. And so we've seen just a ton of finance roles this year."

Besides the bigger, publicly traded cannabis companies, tech startups that serve the industry — like cannabis marketplace LeafLink or cannabis vaporizer company Pax — are also growing rapidly, according to Humiston.

Pax, for its part, has over 100 job openings in multiple states for positions ranging from sales to user experience research.

Tip No. 3: Being passionate about cannabis isn't enough.

An employee holds a leaf of a medical cannabis plant at Pharmocann, an Israeli medical cannabis company in northern Israel January 24, 2019. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

While cannabis companies may certainly appreciate a candidate being passionate about the product, you need to bring "hard skills" to the table, Humiston said.

Kramer, from Whitney Partners, said employers in cannabis are looking for experienced workers.

"Having an industry background is super helpful," Kramer said. "Whether its consumer retail, industrial, or cultivation, there are so many subsectors in cannabis.

Kramer's best advice: "Find your niche and run with it."

And don't be scared to switch up your geography if you really want to land a cannabis job. Humiston said Oklahoma, which legalized cannabis for medical use last year, has one of the fastest-growing cannabis industries in the US. It's a direct effect of the number of medical licenses the state has issued.

"We've seen a ton of growth in states like Oklahoma, Florida, and Nevada this year," Humiston said.

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